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Oh hush hush, ummah’s leaders, lest you wake. Heads of Muslim states, from rich Arab princes and kings to democrats controlling some of the world’s largest armies, surprised nobody with their trademark impotence at the joint OIC-Arab League summit in the luxury of Riyadh last week.

Among those watching very closely were Palestinians, of course, and the few who were able to find some space in the international press made sure everybody knew and understood how they felt.

After all, if they can bury their infants and elderly even as the world surrenders to Israel’s barbarism, they can remind everybody that it is the rich and proud leaders of the Muslim world, not the wretched of the earth braving genocide, that are truly dead.

“Nobody is going to die short (of the lifetime allocated by God). But some people will die short of dignity, short of humanity, and short of principles. Shame on you, and shame on your Arabism.

May Allah disown you, may Allah never forgive you,” Dr Basel Mahdi lamented on Facebook, hours after the OIC-AL combine effectively left Gazans to their fate and, apparently, minutes before he was killed in an Israeli strike on the Mahdi maternity clinic; which, according to reports, can no longer function because of shortage of supplies and killing of too many of its staff and volunteer workers.

Palestine Chronicle, a news website run by brave Gazan journalist and prolific author Ramzy Baroud, quoted one Mohammed Hasan, a resident of Gaza, as saying, “Record this, oh history. In Gaza, 39 infants are dying after the hospital’s fuel has run out. The Arabs’ lands are filled with oil. We swear to God that we will not forgive you, and we will not forget this betrayal”.

It also quoted another resident, Omeima Al-Ghaseen, who said, “Damn everyone who betrayed the people of Gaza, leaving them alone for 36 years under bombardment and destruction”. Another, Ibada Mohammed, said, “Adhering to resistance, relying on it, and bearing arms against the occupation to defend Gaza is better than all the Arab summits, which have proved nothing but statements of condemnation and denunciation”.

It’s pretty clear, then – as if it needed to be any clearer – that Israel’s hunt for Hamas and the innocent blood it shamelessly spills has instead turned the militia into an idea; a defiance that will resonate in the occupied territories unless it is wiped clean of all its residents.

Yet it’s not just the ummah that its representatives did not surprise with their characteristic lack of character.

Surely Israelis would remember the historic words of Golda Meir, one of the pillars of the country’s foundation and its first and only female prime minister, after the Al Aqsa mosque was set on fire in 1969.

“When we burnt the Al Aqsa mosque, I did not sleep the whole night for fear of Arab armies entering Israel from all around. But when the sun rose the next morning, I came to know we can do anything we want, for we are facing an ummah that is asleep”, she said.

Yet it’s not as if the summit was entirely inconsequential. The last few days have proved that only Turkey and Iran, the latter long considered a pariah state even within the world of Islam, are willing to stand in the face of the tsunami of international support for, and Muslim indifference to, Israel’s atrocities, even at the risk of sparking a regional war that sucks in countries from all sides.

President Erdogan rattled capitals from London to Washington by calling Hamas a “liberation group” and Israel a “war criminal”.

“Hamas is not a terrorist organisation, it is a liberation group, mujahideen waging a battle to protect its land and people”, he went on to say. He’s also vowed to deliver a message regarding the EU’s perceived double standards in favour of Israel during his visit to Germany on November 17, and question whether the bloc is standing up for the dignity of human life as Gazans are “massacred” by Israel.

Iran, which proposed a boycott of Israel and designation of the IDF as a “terrorist group” at the summit – only to be shot down – has gone a step ahead and claimed that it, along with the militias that form the resistance, “stands ready for any eventuality”, with “Israel-hitting missiles” in its arsenal.

Its military has also confirmed western media reports that Washington has sent numerous back-channel messages to Tehran, urging it “not to escalate regional tensions”.

That means keeping Hezbollah from lighting up the Lebanese border, no doubt. It is the only force to defeat the IDF in a ground battle, forcing a shameful retreat in 2006, and its leadership has made no secret of plans to enter the war if the bombing doesn’t stop.

So far it’s been raising the temperature slowly and steadily, and very wisely. With the IDF’s elite engaged in Gaza, the 75,000 or so soldiers manning the northern border with Lebanon are mostly reservists, not properly trained and kept away from their jobs, hurting the economy, in anticipation of Hezbollah’s advance.

If the border does become active, and Israel’s infantry overreach forces another aerial blitzkrieg in Lebanon, there is a very real chance of drawing Iran into the conflict, sparking a wider war, and triggering numerous diplomatic and cold war fault lines across the globe.

War with Iran will force a stiff joint response from its allies China and Russia, who are already deep in an anti-imperial alliance confronting US dominance in financial markets and the blood-soaked politics of Nato.

The whole world stands on a knife edge just because America has given Israel carte blanche for genocide to sooth its wounded pride. If the civilised world can condone, support, fund and arm the kind of horrific collective punishment that helpless and abandoned Palestinians are suffering right now, then the prospect of a wider, much bloodier war isn’t that far-fetched either.

It’s for a reason they say that, in extremis, anything is possible.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023

Shahab Jafry

The writer can be reached at [email protected]

Comments

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Az_Iz Nov 16, 2023 07:15am
The champions of human rights are providing Israel with a shield and arms, to carry out this genocide. And many muslim countries also get security from the same champions of human rights. So they will not venture out too far. Once a lot of killing is done, then they will wear their human rights hats, and shed some tears on loss of innocent lives and then move on. If their competitors or adversaries are doing the killings, they will be outraged from day one.
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KU Nov 16, 2023 10:16am
This is not a new phenomenon among Ummah, it is only in name and feel-good moment among the common people. The tutti frutti history of Ummah has always been told as a morale-boosting narrative of good versus evil, while the truth was, and still is, not good for Muslims of OICs. On the other hand, the death of a handful of Americans or Europeans always results in propaganda on human rights and leads to wars. Even now the free Western media shies away from showing the death of thousands of children and women in Gaza and calling it genocide, if we haven't learned anything yet, then we deserve to be their slaves.
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Az_Iz Nov 16, 2023 05:56pm
If adversaries and strategic competitors of the so called champions of human rights, were doing what Israel is doing, they will be outraged from day one. Now, they are providing Israel with a shield and arms, to carry out this genocide, and they whitewash the crimes. Every now and then, they issue a few statements about the loss of the innocent civilian lives. Once the killing is mostly done with, they will wear their human rights hats, and carry on. Many muslim countries depend on these so called champions of human right, for security, and other support . So they won't venture out too far.
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Tariq Qurashi Nov 17, 2023 11:50am
It is painful to see the helplessness of the Muslim world in the face of the massacres, ethnic cleansing, and genocide of innocent Palestinian civilians. The Muslim world needs to ask itself why it is so behind the West in technology; maybe we practice too much religion and too little science?
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